The Rise and Fall of Ripple is a Case Study in Mass Hysteria

Through late 2017 and early 2018, ripple was the darling of cryptocurrency. Mainstream media couldn’t get enough of it, South Koreans couldn’t get enough of it, and nor could crypto newcomers, who had XRP top of their shopping list. Crypto moves at a blistering pace, though, and ripple’s decline has been as rapid as its rise. Now the dust has settled and the hype dissipated, a retrospective reveals the mass hysteria behind the rise and fall of ripple.

Ripple: A Case Study in Collective Obsessional Behavior

In the Middle Ages, a group of nuns in a French convent began randomly mewing like cats. In 1518, the Dancing Plague in Strasbourg caused people to keel over from exhaustion after gyrating for days. In 1962, a laughter epidemic broke out in a girls’ boarding school in Tanzania. And in late 2017, the world became convinced that ripple was a valuable commodity. As ripple’s market capitalization surged, there was even talk of it overtaking bitcoin to become the world’s dominant cryptocurrency. Looking through the timeline reveals the sequence of events that contributed to the rise and fall of XRP.

Phase 1: Stagnation

Up until two months ago, ripple was the great sleeper of cryptocurrency. Due to the vast number of XRP in existence, its huge market cap meant it was a constant presence in the cryptocurrency top 10. Traders hated it though, dubbing it Cripple, while decentralization purists had more ideological reasons for disliking XRP, arguing that it wasn’t even a cryptocurrency.

After briefly surging in May, ripple entered into a lengthy slump. Read More Here